Boost Operational Responsiveness with Microsoft PowerApps and Nexmo

This post was contributed by Glen Kunene. Glen is the Editor-in-Chief of the platform marketing team at Nexmo, the Vonage API platform. Read more about next-generation communications on the Nexmo blog: http://www.nexmo.com/blog/

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With Microsoft PowerApps, you can connect to services such as SharePoint, Office 365, and Salesforce to create new data, quickly build apps based on this data (without writing any code), and then publish your apps across web and mobile. PowerApps offers templates for easy adoption, but you can also create your own custom apps with a visual builder tool.

With the recent release of a Nexmo connector to PowerApps, you now can also integrate SMS and text-to-speech messaging to your applications. Leverage Nexmo to add a custom notification function that sends alerts to your app users whenever a predetermined event occurs. You can use SMS and text-to-speech notifications to extract and broadcast meaningful business signals from the noise of less important data. With SMS open rates in the range of 97-99%, you can be assured that your Nexmo-powered app notifications will receive their due attention.

Imagine the gains in business efficiency when these notifications prompt stakeholders on your team to take immediate action on critical items such as:

A business process requires input for approval

A prospect is ready to become a customer with the proper follow-up

A customer has a showstopper issue

A high-priority email from senior leadership is delivered

To demonstrate how you can add Nexmo to your PowerApps, the following section provides a demo for integrating the connector to a template.

SMS Notifications When a File Is Uploaded to SharePoint from PowerApps

This section walks through the process for adding SMS notifications to the Upload a file to SharePoint from PowerApps template.

Go to your My flows page on PowerApps. Click Create from template.

Click the Upload a file to SharePoint from PowerApps card.

Ensure you have the required credentials for the template. In this case, you are initially prompted to integrate your SharePoint account and site. Click Continue.

The next thing you will see are connectors waiting to be customized with your information. Enter your SharePoint site address and the folder path to the location where you would like PowerApps to store the file.

Your goal of file creation is now complete, but what about getting notified when this happens? Use the Nexmo connector to send yourself a SMS notification when a file is created.

Click the + New step button and add an action. Search for Nexmo in the search field. Click Send an SMS, which should be the first option.

To complete the Nexmo integration with your flow, click the ellipses (...) at the top right of the Nexmo connector card.

If you do not have a linked Nexmo account already, click Add new connection and enter the API key and secret.

If you are new to Nexmo, create a free account to acquire your API key and secret. You will also need to go to the Numbers tab and grab a phone number. This will be used in the Sender Id input field (this number is from whom the message is sent).

Make the connection and enter the three basic fields (Sender Id, To Phone Number and Text). For this demo, you will not need to dig into the advanced options.

That’s it! Click Create flow at the top of your page and your PowerApp is live!

To recap, you have created a Microsoft PowerApp flow that uploads a file to SharePoint and when the file has been successfully uploaded, it sends an SMS to the To Phone Number provided to the Nexmo connector.

The Nexmo messaging connector also provides these SMS and text-to-speech capabilities to Microsoft Logic Apps and Microsoft Flow.

What is PowerApps?

PowerApps is a service for building and using custom business apps that connect to your data and work across the web and mobile - without the time and expense of custom software development.